Tag Archives: Rachel Joyce

Great Opening Paragraph 140… ‘Miss Benson’s Beetle’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“When Margery was ten, she fell in love with a beetle.”
Rachel JoyceFrom ‘Miss Benson’s Beetle’ by Rachel Joyce

Click the title to read my review of MISS BENSON’S BEETLE.

Here’s the #FirstPara of THE UNLIKELY PILGRIMAGE OF HAROLD FRY, also by Rachel Joyce.

And read my reviews of these other books by Rachel Joyce:-
MAUREEN FRY AND THE ANGEL OF THE NORTH
PERFECT
THE LOVE SONG OF MISS QUEENIE HENNESSY

Try one of these 1st paras & discover a new author:-
‘The Slaves of Solitude’ by Patrick Hamilton 
‘Queen Camilla’ by Sue Townsend 
‘The Secret Agent’ by Joseph Conrad 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#FirstPara MISS BENSON’S BEETLE by Rachel Joyce #books #amreading https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-7gx via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North’ by Rachel Joyce

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If you haven’t read the two previous books in this trilogy, please don’t start Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North by Rachel Joyce until you have. This novella can standalone but you will miss many references. It’s as delightfully funny and painfully sad as The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, and neatly completes the Fry story. It supplies the missing piece in the jigsaw, that hole in the middle. Rachel Joyce It is ten years since Maureen Fry’s husband Harold returned home from his walking adventure in search of old friend, Queenie. Maureen has a minor presence in the first two novels, so this is her painfully supressed story about unbearable grief. Not always a sympathetic character, Maureen has always felt different. Until she met Harold, she felt as if she were ‘being measured against something she didn’t understand and would never get right.’ Always lacking in self-confidence, Maureen struggled first after the death of their son David and later to accept Harold’s quest to see Queenie one last time. This book tells of Maureen’s quest, to find herself.
Deeply emotional and simply written, this is about the longevity of grief and how it can permeate every minute of your day. The depth of Joyce’s understanding of human nature, the poetically simple language and the parallel rather than sequential storytelling reminds me of Elizabeth Strout’s Lucy Barton novels.
There are some ‘chuckle out loud’ moments such as the scene with the assistant in a diner. Like Harold, Maureen meets people on her winter journey who surprise her in positive and darker ways. But principally it is about Maureen learning the confidence to accept – and love – herself as she is, to accept each person as an individual and to understand that David was his own person too. She cannot mould the real person David was into one that fits her memory of him.
A quick read, it can be read in one sitting, but for all its brevity it packs a punch. I was still thinking about it days after I read the last page, always a good sign.

Read my reviews of these other novels by Rachel Joyce:-
MISS BENSON’S BEETLE
PERFECT
THE LOVE SONG OF MISS QUEENIE HENNESSY

And read here the first paragraph of THE UNLIKELY PILGRIMAGE OF HAROLD FRY

If you like this, try:-
‘The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes’ by Anna McPartlin
‘The Hoarder’ by Jess Kid
‘The Funny Thing About Norman Foreman’ by Julietta Henderson

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview MAUREEN FRY AND THE ANGEL OF THE NORTH by Rachel Joyce https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-5Td via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:-
Kiran Millwood Hargrave

#BookReview ‘Miss Benson’s Beetle’ by Rachel Joyce #adventure

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What an uplifting read is Miss Benson’s Beetle by Rachel Joyce, an author who never fails to deliver a read that is both thoughtful and chuckle-out-loud. It is a tale of failure, friendship, the spirit of adventure and never-say-die. Above all it is a story of not giving up, never allowing yourself to be defeated. Rachel Joyce Margery Benson has never fit in, never married. It is 1950 and she is a teacher at a girls’ school, mocked and ridiculed by pupils, never liked by colleagues. Alone now after the death of her aunts who raised her after the death of her parents, she knows she lacks self-worth but doesn’t know how to change things. The one thing that gives her pleasure is remembering time spent as a child with her father who encouraged her to read. Her favourite book was Incredible Creatures, an illustrated guide to extinct and ‘never found’ animals. Margery fell in love with a gold beetle suspected to be living on the Pacific island of New Caledonia.
A sequence of events sets the middle-aged Margery on an ocean liner bound for Australia in search of both the beetle and a purpose for her life. After interviewing and rejecting three unsuitable people for the job of her assistant, Margery is resigned to travelling alone. Until she is joined at the last minute by probably the most unsuitable of the three applicants, Enid Pretty. ‘Her hair was a stiff puff with the perky hat pinned on top; about as useful in terms of sun protection as a beer mat on her head.’ Unbeknown to both women, they are being followed by someone else. And unbeknown to Margery, Enid has another reason for wanting to leave the country in a hurry.
I read this at a pace as the women negotiate prejudice, snobbishness, barriers and phobias. Joyce doesn’t spare the at times graphic detail of two unsuitable women on a tropical island facing cyclones, eels, hunger and illness, trekking through the jungle, in search of a beetle that probably doesn’t exist.
A joyful book.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

Read my reviews of these other novels by Rachel Joyce:-
MAUREEN FRY AND THE ANGEL OF THE NORTH
PERFECT
THE LOVE SONG OF MISS QUEENIE HENNESSY

And read here the first paragraph of THE UNLIKELY PILGRIMAGE OF HAROLD FRY

If you like this, try:-
‘The Signature of All Things’ by Elizabeth Gilbert
‘Doppler’ by Erlend Loe
‘Highland Fling’ by Nancy Mitford

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview MISS BENSON’S BEETLE by Rachel Joyce https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4UW via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy’ by Rachel Joyce #contemporary

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I was blown away by The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy by Rachel Joyce and read it in two sittings. First, you do not need to have read The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry before you read this. I don’t really think it matters which of the two you read first, they are companion books rather than prequel and sequel. Second, this is the most accurate portrayal of people living in a hospice that I have read, and it is not something often written about. Rachel JoyceRachel Joyce confronts head-on the fact of Queenie’s terminal illness, and that of her fellow residents at St Bernadine’s Hospice. But she doesn’t concentrate on their illnesses, she concentrates on their characters and in this way they form a colourful backdrop to Queenie’s story. They are not defined by their illnesses, and neither is Queenie. This is the story of her life, a story we learn because she is writing a long letter to Harold Fry.
Queenie is in the North-East of England, Harold is in Devon. They worked together many years ago. Queenie writes to Harold to tell him he is dying. He writes a reply, but instead of posting the letter he decides to deliver it himself and starts walking. That was the plot of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, a book about Harold coming to terms with his own life.
This book is about Queenie’s life. Afraid he will not arrive before she dies, Queenie starts to write the story of her life – with the help of nun Sister Mary Inconnue who re-types Queenie’s handwritten notes. It is Queenie’s explanation of and apology for a wrong she did to Harold while they both worked at a brewery in Kingsbridge, Devon. As she nears her end, Queenie struggles to write, but Sister Mary quietly encourages her, lifts her when she is faltering, puts the notebook in her lap and tells her she has to finish her story.
It is so moving, and it is very funny. St Bernadine’s Hospice is a real place populated by real people and they are the fabric of Queenie’s life now. This is a book about death, and about life. It is about love, grief, difficult choices, and finally it is about making peace with yourself before the end.
Just read it!
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

Read my reviews of these other novels by Rachel Joyce:-
MAUREEN FRY AND THE ANGEL OF THE NORTH
MISS BENSON’S BEETLE
PERFECT

And read here the first paragraph of THE UNLIKELY PILGRIMAGE OF HAROLD FRY

If you like this, try:-
‘The Museum of You’ by Carys Bray
‘The Roundabout Man’ by Clare Morrall
‘Paper Cup’ by Karen Campbell

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE LOVE SONG OF MISS QUEENIE HENNESSY by Rachel Joyce via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1f5

Great opening paragraph… 59

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the unlikely pilgrimage of harold fry - GOP 5-6-13
“The letter that would change everything arrived on a Tuesday. It was an ordinary morning in mid-April that smelt of clean washing and grass cuttings. Harold Fry sat at the breakfast table, freshly shaved, in a clean shirt and tie, with  slice of toast that he wasn’t eating. He gazed beyond the kitchen window at the clipped lawn, which was spiked in the middle by Maureen’s telescopic washing line, and trapped on all three sides by the neighbours’ closeboard fencing.”
‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry’ by Rachel Joyce

Great opening paragraph 59… ‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“The letter that would change everything arrived on a Tuesday. It was an ordinary morning in mid-April that smelt of clean washing and grass cuttings. Harold Fry sat at the breakfast table, freshly shaved, in a clean shirt and tie, with  slice of toast that he wasn’t eating. He gazed beyond the kitchen window at the clipped lawn, which was spiked in the middle by Maureen’s telescopic washing line, and trapped on all three sides by the neighbours’ closeboard fencing.”
Rachel JoyceFrom ‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry’ by Rachel Joyce

Read my reviews of these novels by Rachel Joyce:-
MAUREEN FRY AND THE ANGEL OF THE NORTH
MISS BENSON’S BEETLE
PERFECT
THE LOVE SONG OF MISS QUEENIE HENNESSY

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Perfume’ by Patrick Suskind
‘Original Sin’ by PD James
‘Illywhacker’ by Peter Carey

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE UNLIKELY PILGRIMAGE OF HAROLD FRY by Rachel Joyce http://wp.me/p5gEM4-kt via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Perfect’ by Rachel Joyce #contemporary #time

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In 1972, two seconds were added to time because it was Leap Year and because time was ‘out of joint’ with the movement of the Earth. It is the addition of these two seconds which causes such upheaval in the life of Byron Hemmings, an imaginative 11-year old boy, and his school friend James. Perfect by Rachel Joyce is about the impact of those two seconds, one stiflingly hot summer. Who would have thought that such a small stumble in time could disrupt so many lives? Rachel Joyce Joyce is an accomplished storyteller with a simple style which is deceptively complex. She weaves together Byron’s story with Jim’s, a troubled man who cleans tables in a supermarket café whilst battling his inner demons. Not once does she explain the link between these two stories, allowing the reader’s imagination to suggest possibilities, until right at the end when she surprises us with the truth. Car accidents feature in both strands, but neither car accident is what it seems. Both accidents are catalysts for what comes next.
The voice of the boy/almost teenager Byron is an interesting choice which allows Joyce to show us the inside of his parents’ marriage, without Byron fully understanding what he is seeing. At once he has both a child’s perception, and an adult’s. Joyce trusts the reader to believe or not believe Byron’s interpretation of things.
She has a similarly subtle approach to observation, hinting at the differences between Byron’s mother Diana, and Diana’s new friend Beverley, by how they walk. Diana’s ‘slim heels’ go “clip clip”. Beverley’s sandals follow with a “slap slap.” Diana is a wisp of a character, light, graceful and young, young in comparison with her son. Very young compared with her husband Seymour who dominates the house, despite his absence during the week, with his stern rules of do’s and don’ts. Diana’s car, a Jaguar he bought for her as a means of demonstrating his success, comes to symbolise his power over her. First she accedes to his control, then chafes against it and finally rebels.
Byron watches this with discomfort and uncertainty, unsure who this new mother, this new Diana, is. As his mother grows more mentally frail, he begins unconsciously to echo his father. He doesn’t like Beverley calling his mother ‘Di’ for example. “It was like cutting her in half.” As Diana leaves household tasks undone, he does them for her.
Joyce has a deft way of handling the mood. One moment, light-hearted, then with a sentence she twists the heartstrings and adds another small touch of mystery.  Jim learns that having a friend means laughing at things and seeing them through the friend’s eyes, as if the friend is “the part of themselves that is missing.” Do we all have something missing, which is provided by our friends and loved ones, or is it just Jim? And what happened to Jim to mess him up like this?
Perfect is about the nature of time, starting with the extra seconds and moving onto Diana’s abandonment of clocks. An exploration of whether time can heal a painful past.

Read my reviews of these other novels by Rachel Joyce:-
MAUREEN FRY AND THE ANGEL OF THE NORTH
MISS BENSON’S BEETLE
THE LOVE SONG OF MISS QUEENIE HENNESSY

And read here the first paragraph of THE UNLIKELY PILGRIMAGE OF HAROLD FRY

If you like this, try:-
‘Somewhere Inside of Happy’ by Anna McPartlin
‘The Language of Others’ by Clare Morrall
‘Mobile Library’ by David Whitehouse

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview PERFECT by Rachel Joyce via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-KD